I've been looking at some of Peter Chung's (Aeon Flux guy) stuff recently and thought it would be fun to animate a long-limbed character in LW. I took just a basic human model I had lying around and stretched it out to the proportions I wanted and started working on the costume. I want chainmail for the upper arms, but I'm not entirely sure what the best way to do it is. Right now I've made the material look metallic and then applied a basic ring to the transparency and bump channels.

It looks okay up close, but you can't really tell anything from farther away. I'm using a cubic projection but the texture is small enough that you can't see the seams. If I crank up the size of the texture, you can see seams. I was wondering if any of you more experienced LWers knew of any better tricks. Am I better off modeling the rings?

Hmm, I searched for threads w/ chainmail, don't know how I missed that one. I don't really need this stuff to move like real chainmail. I just want it to have that look. I'll probably delete out the model underneath and and just animate it as if it was the arm.

Know any straight-texturing ways to do it?

Cman

06-18-2003, 01:04 AM

Did you see the story on Peter Chung on the Animatrix DVD?

kretin

06-18-2003, 02:12 AM

Create a cylindrical UV map around that part of the arm, and paint your rings onto that. Being cylindrical, making the pattern repeat across the seam is easy...

That way you can make the rings larger, which will look alot better.

SimianLogic

06-18-2003, 03:00 AM

I'll try that kretin, thanks for the tip.

Cman - yeah, great stuff. I loved his short, too.

leigh

06-18-2003, 03:17 AM

Firstly, you are going to HAVE to change that, because the rings are way too small for chainmail :) Even the tiniest links in reality would be a lot larger than that.

I created a character a while back that had a chainmail tunic, and faced a similar dilemma - how the hell to do the mail. I tried modelling it, but due to the fact that I wanted it really hi-res, the poly count went crazy, even with only half the tunic done. So I decided to do it solely with texturing.

I UV mapped it, and simply created a chainmail texture. Using a bump map made it look fine (although displacement would probably have been better, however LW's displacement is not great).

Here are some shots that show it:

http://leigh.cgcommunity.com/images/new_orc_14.jpg

http://leigh.cgcommunity.com/images/new_orc_16.jpg

It looks ok enough to pass off as chainmail ;) Even Weta Digital liked this one :)

SimianLogic

06-18-2003, 04:23 AM

Those look great, Leigh. Is that another surface behind the chain? My first try at UV mapping it on turned out like crap, so I guess I'll give it anothe go. If you've still got it lying around, could you post what you used for your UV map? Seeing that as a reference might help some.

leigh

06-18-2003, 04:44 AM

Is that another surface behind the chain?

Nope, it's all one surface :)

If you've still got it lying around, could you post what you used for your UV map? Seeing that as a reference might help some.

Yes of course! Here is a smaller version of the texture I used (the actual texture on the model is 2000x2000 pixels).

http://leigh.cgcommunity.com/images/ORC_tunic.jpg

SimianLogic

06-18-2003, 05:13 AM

Awesome, thanks.

SimianLogic

06-19-2003, 05:17 AM

Decided to finish the character before I got fed up with the chainmail and just gave up on the whole thing. I used Ptolemy from Reign as a model for the face. I know the geometry is still a little messy around the nose, but any other C&C are welcome. I've still got to do the actual eyes and ears, should be fun. Also need to figure out some kind of headgear to stick on him. When I thought this guy up, I pictured him with something on his head, but I have no clue what I'm going to do yet. Modeler's block I guess.

This is my second head, came a little more smoothly. I know it's nowhere close to a realistic head, but that's fine with me. I did the shape of the head with splines, but I didn't patch them. I just used P and built each polygon on its own. For the mouth I followed Dan Ablan's Inside LW7 and then sewed it onto the head I'd made.

As far as the costume goes, I still have to put in a lot of detailwork on the bracers and the metal underwear (codpiece?).

http://www.arches.uga.edu/~simian/facenbody.jpg

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